The Virgil Abloh collection for Ikea is coming 

Everyone is looking for it, everyone wants it. Virgil Abloh, an American designer and artist, boasts so many collaborations that, due to too much stress, he decided to take a few months off from the catwalks and the busy schedule. Meanwhile – the date is set for November 1 -, the Markerad collection he designed for Ikea arrives in Italian stores. Announced last year, the capsule is a series of 15 pieces conceived for the Millennial house, a space to personalize, as happens with clothing, where the artistic, narrative and emotional values ​​of objects come first. “Millennials expect the functional aspect to be resolved first and then demand that an added value be created, an emotional connection with the product,” confirms Henrik Most, creative leader of Ikea who developed the capsule together with Abloh.

The products are all characterized by graphic and artistic interventions. There is even a backlit version of the Mona Lisa and obviously could not miss a new branded version of the Frakta bag that the founder of the Off-White brand transformed into a maxi bag with the inscription “Sculpture”. His iconic quotes – they explain from Ikea – are ubiquitous and are used to add a touch of irony and humor to everyday objects. “The goal is to ennoble the anonymous, the iconic objects of everyday life that we use without noticing them,” confirms Abloh. «The ethos of the collection is to add an artistic quality to anonymous objects. Art is not just a picture hanging on the wall, but can also be present in objects such as a chair, a table or a rug. When we apply a doorstop to a leg of a normal chair we create something unexpected, an interruption ».

But as expected, Ikea has not completely renounced the functionality of the products: the table, for example, is a reinterpretation of the Scandinavian modernism of the 50s and thanks to a system of interlocking dowels just a few steps are enough to mount it without tools. And even sustainability didn’t take second place. The Swedish giant assures that all the cotton used for the collection comes from certified sources, is recycled or grown using less water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.